Google Voice

Google recently unified its various chat services into one last week with the announcement of Hangouts at Google I/O. This will allow you chat with friends like a normal IM client, but it also integrates Google's video chatting capabilities. However, if you use Google Voice religiously, you might have noticed that outbound calls from the desktop have been disabled, but Google says that this will come back in the near future.

Google's Conversational Voice Search system has been living on both iOS and Android for either weeks or months - this week it's coming to the Chrome web browser for all devices complete with a command familiar to Google Glass users: "Ok, Google." This system will allow users to speak with natural language - conversational, that is - on any desktop computer with a microphone.

When you want to make a phone call over the Internet, you likely think of Skype or perhaps even Facebook's voice messaging service, which is currently in its infant years. Rarely does one think of Google Voice, which is disappointing considering how fairly robust and capable the service is. Still, despite its less-than-stellar popularity, Google has rolled out a bug fix update for the service.

The oncoming wave that is Google Babel (previously spoken of as Google Babble, as well) will soon be hitting your devices at full speed. This service will be a cross-device and cross-platform ecosystem for chatting with your friends and associates, and will be available not just on your Android smartphones and tablets, but your desktop computers too. And not only that - today's leak includes mention of a "first class iOS experience' as well!

Google has announced today that its extending its free Gmail voice call promotion into 2013 in the US and Canada. This means you'll be able to make domestic calls right from Gmail at no cost at all. Furthermore, you can still make international calls from Gmail at "insanely low rates", starting at just a penny per minute for calls to most countries.

The iPhone 5 and iOS 6 have received their official first update for Google Voice, the app Google produces to keep the whole world in with their own lovely collection of phone numbers. The Google Voice app for those that have been working with it for some time will not notice a whole lot different as far as functionality, but they will find their whole iPhone 5 4-inch display being utilized. This update comes with a collection of bug fixes as well.

We've been writing a lot about new updates for iOS apps lately, but for the first time in recent memory, we finally have more to talk about than the fact that an app has been updated to support iOS 6 and iPhone 5. Google has unleashed a new update for Google Voice on iOS, and though the changelog is still painfully short, it does come with a pair of exciting new features in tow.

Google released an update today for its Google Voice online calling and voice message management service that will help you better control the calls you receive. It recently integrated Google+ with the service so that you could customize the answering rules for your different Groups and Circles. Now, they are extending that customization to calls you receive from people not already in your address book and anonymous calls.

A quick refresher if you’re not familiar with Google Voice: it allows you to choose a US phone number to serve as your central number. Any calls to that number can be filtered and forwarded to any of your phones accordingly. Other features like voicemail transcription and SMS forwarding are the cherries on top. Apps are available for iOS and Android, although carrier integration is the dream many are chasing. Google has hinted that that it’s trying to court the various carriers.

Now you can call out from your desktop using Google+ Hangouts using a brand new Telephone feature, this in addition to several other features added this month including Google Docs and screensharing. It's Google's Vincent Paquet who lets us in on the several updates we can expect imminently for our desktop-based Google+ experience, showing how simple it is to dial someone in at the tap of a few buttons. This calling feature will be free for the United States and Canada while dialing out to France, Germany, India, and Mexico will cost you a bit per minute.